Microsoft has confirmed that Hewlett-Packard will stop selling its MediaSmart Server line, which run Windows Home Server. The computer manufacturer plans to shift “additional resources to focus on webOS initiatives,” according to MediaSmartServer.net. HP inherited the webOS platform when it acquired Palm, so this move is not too surprising. In a blog post, Microsoft said HP’s decision “is in no way related” to the recent hubbub over the removal of a popular feature from the next version of Windows …
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in an e-mail response to news site We Got Served, said he’ll “look into” a recent tizzy over the planned removal of a popular feature in Windows Home Server. The next version of the software, aimed at consumers who want to set up home servers for namely entertainment, is slated to lose Drive Extender, a user-friendly tool for setting up RAID-like hard drives without technical hurdles. Microsoft plans to align the new Home Server (codenamed “Vail”) with its small-business-oriented …
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has, at least in the public eye, been leading the charge to do away with software platforms like Adobe Flash and embrace the open HTML5 standard for displaying media on the Web. Microsoft, it seems, agrees — the software giant is moving its Flash competitor, Silverlight, to the backseat as more of a development platform than a front-end interface.
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Microsoft has released a preview of Windows Small Business Server 7. The operating system is built off of Windows Server 2008 R2, which the company released last October along with Windows 7. The preview, available here to Microsoft Connect members, includes SharePoint Server 2010 SP1, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Windows Update. Via PCMag
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Research firm Gartner said today it expects worldwide enterprise software sales to grow 4.5 percent this year, increasing from $222.4 billion in 2009 to $232 billion in 2010. “After declining 2.6 percent in 2009, the worldwide market for enterprise software is recovering well with signs of continuing growth on the horizon,” Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner, said in a news release. For North America, Gartner expects an 8.5 percent increase from $102.1 billion in 2009 to $110.8 billion …
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Microsoft’s Hohm energy-awareness service will move under Windows Embedded and the Windows Embedded team will move to the Server and Tools Business in a minor reorganization announced today.
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Today’s mouthful of a product release: Windows High Performance Computing Server 2008 Release 2 — or Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, for short. Microsoft today released the top-of-the-line server software, which includes deeper integration with Office and Windows. The company said it is working on a release that incorporates the Windows Azure cloud-computing platform. More information is here.
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